Spurs endure marathon practice to prepare for Dallas

Coach Gregg Popovich put his team through a practice of well more than two hours Wednesday afternoon as the Spurs prepare for their game Friday night at Dallas.

The Spurs spent extra time in the film room, watching the defensive breakdowns that led to Miami’s 110-80 victory in San Antonio’s worst loss of the season.

“We were disappointed in the way we played,” Spurs center Antonio McDyess said. “Pop really wanted us to come in to look at some of the things we did. We could have looked through the whole film, but we didn’t do that. There were a lot of mistakes we made that we wanted to clean up going into the Dallas game.”

They then followed the film session with one of the longest practices of the season. It was so long that the scoreboard registered a 102-95 game in the scrimmage when the media was invited in after practice finished. Typically, those games end up in the fifties and sixties.

“Today was one of those days,” McDyess said. “We want to do the things that will lead into Friday’s game, because we’ve been lacking on defensive schemes and out of whack on offense. We want to clean up a lot of things.”

The Spurs didn’t lose any ground in their quest to nail down the league’s best record and the top seed for the approaching playoffs. They maintain a 6 ½-game over the Los Angeles Lakers and a seven-game bulge over Dallas for the best record in the Western Conference. And their lead is 5 ½ games over Eastern Conference leader Chicago for the best record in the league.

But after big losses to the Lakers and Miami during the last 10 days, Spurs guard Tony Parker said the team has to forget about its lofty position in the standings.

“Six or seven games, forget that because we aren’t playing very well,” Parker said. “The way we are playing now, it will be a quick exit in the playoffs. We need to forget about our record and go back to playing good Spurs basketball.”

The Spurs had a full roster for the practice as new signee Danny Green was practicing with the team, spending extra time at the end of practice working on his 3-pointer. Green was signed to a 10-day contract Wednesday to fill the roster slot Othyus Jeffers formerly filled.